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"Believing Christians should look upon themselves as such a creative minority and ... espouse once again the best of its heritage, thereby being at the service of humankind at large." --Joseph Ratzinger

The dean of the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. claimed during his weekly address this past Sunday that it is a sin to oppose homosexuality.

The message was part of a weekend tribute to the homosexual youth at the National Cathedral, and a commemoration of the death of Matthew Shepherd, whose slaying sparked the passage of the federal “hate crimes” bill signed into law by Barack Obama in 2009. During his speech, Gary Hall blamed churches across the country for influencing American beliefs about homosexuality.

“We must now have the courage to take the final step and call homophobia and heterosexism what they are. They are sin. Homophobia is a sin. Heterosexism is a sin. Shaming people for whom they love is a sin,” Hall asserted. “Only when all our churches say that clearly and boldly and courageously will our LGBT youth be free to grow up in a culture that totally embraces them fully as they are.”

He proceeded to claim that churches that oppose homosexuality produce a culture that is harmful to children.

“It’s more than tragic—in fact it’s shameful—that faith communities, especially Christian ones, continue to be complicit in putting our children at risk and abetting the attitudes that oppress them, thereby encouraging the aggressors who would subject our children to pain, humiliation, and violence,” Hall stated.

24 comments:

Well, the Episcopal Church has already apologized for the Gospels (they're apparently anti-semitic) so I guess this should come as no surprise.. Divorce, cohabitation, same-sex acts, and abortion are not sins to TEC, so maybe they decided they needed some sins as they have gotten rid of so many.

The Dean had better watch out with that "sexual orientation is a gift" thing, though, as people are starting to say that pedophilia is an orientation too. Not sure he wants to go that far. He'd probably be better leaving that one to th NEXT Dean...

Ok, I admit it. I'm a sinner. It is rather strange that the story has come out that Matthew Shepherd knew the guys convicted of his murder, partied with them and peddled their drugs. Maybe not such a hate crime, after all. Not that he deserved to be murdered, just that the whole hate crime thing was a fantasy.TEC has been gone for a long time.

"But they who doing evil, become also involved in evil habit, so that the very habit of evil will not let them see that it is evil; will in turn become defenders of their own evil deeds. They rage when they are rebuked, like the Sodomites long ago, who said to the just man who rebuked them for their most evil inclination: You came here as a stranger, not as a judge (Gen. xix. 9). So dominant among them became the practice of this abominable foulness, that wantonness now became justice; and one who opposed it, more to be censured than one who practiced it."

- Sunday Sermons of the Great Fathers Volume Four: From the Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost to the Twenty-fourth and Last Sunday after Pentecost, p118 (St. Augustine, Sermo XCVIII)

...and the poor. Lets not patronize them with food or water or clothing. That says their lifestyle is inadequate and that is hateful and sinful. Lets remove the corporeal works of mercy as our imposing our values on others. More sin. Let them starve to death out of love. Lets abort them before they get to be poor out of Christian love.....oh cant even type that sarcastically without getting nauseated. How dumb is dumb? I think the piscopalians have raised the bar to the point where only atheism and islam will out-stupid them.

"For admission has been secretly gained by some who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly persons who pervert the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ. . . . It is these who set up divisions, worldly people, devoid of the Spirit." (Jude 1:4,19, RSV-CE)

I see nothing that states the dean is pro-gay marriage. I see the dean stating what the Church has always taught. The Catechism of the Catholic Church which was written decades ago but is an accumulation of everything the Catholic Church has always believed says "The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided." We need to allow people to accept the truth about their sexuality, not hide it! Hiding such a truth is a great lie and thus a great evil, and to encourage hiding this truth is just as evil.

The truth about a homosexual inclination, Nick, is that it is objectively a grave disordered, as the Catechism and Holy See itself has declared repeatedly. Whether a person "hides" it or not is up to them, but your email suggests that it need be celebrated, which is not in accord with Christianity. For people with a normal heterosexual inclination to be disturbed by homosexual conduct is not a sin; it's normal.

2357 Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity,141 tradition has always declared that "homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered."142 They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.

I never said that homosexual acts were acceptable, nor should they be celebrated. It was not my intention to give the impression I was condoning homosexual acts. Allow me to clarify my point: we all have our sexuality because God has given it to us as we must not deny ourselves the truth of our sexuality by hiding it. This means that one's sexuality needs to be embraced within the context of the Catholic faith - within in the context of chastity and celebacy - if one desires to be closer to God.

I just don't know if I agree with that. Does God give us other disorders like alcoholism? Lust? Do we need to embrace those disorders also and not hide them? I think it was Fulton Sheen who said yes, we need to hide, i.e., repress, and fight against them. There are plenty of people who suffered from same sex attraction who have overcome it and have married.

The word "disordered" when used by the Church to define homosexuality does not equate it to something sinful, but something that is not ordered to the normal sexual appetite. In this light, persons with homosexual or other sexual appetites other than heterosexual appetites are designed by God to not create families – and therefore cannot marry in the Church - because they cannot do so by the order of their sexual appetite. “For there are some eunuchs who were that way from birth, and some who were made eunuchs by oth­ers, and some who became eunuchs for the sake of the king­dom of heaven. The one who is able to accept this should accept it” (Matthew 19.12).

I find it odd that you equate homosexuality with lust or alcoholism. By what merit is having an attraction to the same sex any more sinful that having an attraction to the opposite sex? The orientation of one's sexual attraction is not the source of lust. The sin of lust lies in one's intentions, how they act upon their attractions. Therefore, persons with same-sex attraction undergo the same tests that persons with opposite-sex attraction do, namely fidelity to God through their practice of their sexuality.

I don't particularly want to address your point of people who had same-sex attraction entering into heterosexual relationships, but since you brought it up I will say one thing on this point. Same-sex attraction is not something that should be fixed for there is nothing to correct what God has already made good in His image. As I have already said, all sexual orientation is designed by God, and all sexuality is used as a test to prove our fidelity to God in either chaste or celibate life.

Lastly, I don't think repressing sexual appetites is a teaching of the Catholic Church. To repress means to deny the inner-truth, which is contrary to living out the truth, which is contrary to living as a disciple of the Truth. No Catholic can honestly deny who they are and still be Catholic. I think a more appropriate answer to dealing with our sexual appetites is to acknowledge they exist, seek guidance from the Church, pray to God for aid, and fight against all temptation to lust. Repressing the truth would only allow Satan to push one deeper into darkness. I'm surprised that Cardinal Fulton Sheen said we have to repress our sexuality. Can you forward me the link to where he says this?

And of course you have to repress disordered impulses. What makes you think sexual urges are different from other urges, and never need to be repressed? Just because your culture treats sex the way Friedrich von Bernhardi treated war?

The sexual urge is good in itself—so is the urge to eat and to acquire good things and, for that matter, to destroy that which is detrimental. But the sexual urge can be misdirected, just as the urge to eat can become gluttony, the urge to acquire goods can become greed, and the urge to destroy evil can become hatred. Of course urges not directed to their proper ends must be repressed.

I do not agree with these statements at all. However I do believe that what is really a sin is for these spiritual leaders who promote anti-Christian views. They need to learn to separate theology from politics.

First, allow me to say that it is a pleasure to communicate with you Sophia's Favorite. I have frequented your blog for about a year and a half and I always find it enjoyable. Your intellectual musings inspired me to write more about what I think. And, well, here I am.

Now, I cannot agree that homosexuality is a behavior. Lust is a behavior. God doesn’t make us lust because He cannot make us sin, and I agree with that. Homosexuality is a sexual order, not a behavior. Therefore, God can make us attracted to the same sex as well as any other sexual orientation (I state not whether this happens at birth or afterward, the truth is we do not know when one develops their sexual orientation). This seems to be possible since many of us are chosen to be eunuchs from birth, ie, God has chosen some of us to be celibate for the Kingdom without option, such as those with non-opposite-sex attraction. Sexual homosexual actions are a behavior that is indeed sinful because it is lustful, but the fact of being homosexual is not a sin in and of itself.

I can accept the act of repression is a good thing if we are to define repression to mean to fight with vigilance and all sincerity to destroy what is sinful in one’s self so they can become closer to God – which is the definition I had given it, but it might have been poorly conveyed. In this way, persons with same-sex attraction are required to fight their inclinations to act out homosexual sexual acts because such acts by their very nature are sinful by not being ordered to what God has sanctioned as holy: a sexual union capable of creating life. Therefore, homosexual sexual acts are always sinful, but being sexually ordered as a homosexual is not sinful any more than being ordered as a heterosexual is sinful since God chooses our sexual orientation. In fact, I would dare say that those who do have same-sex attraction have a massive cross to carry because they have been given by God a sexual orientation that harshly tests their faith in the realm of sexual fidelity to Him.

Sexual orientation is a myth. It was an idea originating from the same intellectual field as scientific racism and "rest-cures", and then used as a political tool by Kinsey, who also compiled statistics meant to represent the whole of society by interviewing convicted sex-offenders.

Besides, being "sexually ordered as a homosexual" is like being "gastronomically ordered as a cannibal". It is doubtful such a thing actually exists; if it does, it's a mental illness. There is research to support the idea that homosexuality is a maladaptive coping-mechanism for childhood sexual abuse.

God makes no mental illness, nor any other disordered thing; such things are the result of the Fall. Certainly he does not create an urge toward disordered acts, as a test; a God that did that would be evil, and unworthy of our worship. The real God forbears to interfere with free will (including that of Satan), but he does not create any urge toward wrongdoing.

And celibacy is not a thing imposed by God; again, God is not a tyrant. It is the freely-chosen sacrifice of a thing entirely good, laid upon the altar of God by those who choose to dedicate their lives to contemplating him, or by those who are called to act as his agents in the sacraments.

Some people must live in sexual continence because they cannot bring themselves to rightly-ordered sexual desire, but that is no more celibacy in the religious sense then a recovering alcoholic's avoidance of alcohol is asceticism. Those conditions are crosses which must be borne and which can bear spiritual fruit; they are not vocations.

I see your point hits the mark and where mine misses. Your last paragraph is really the point where I truly understood you, and consequently unified all previous paragraphs together for me. I'm not wholly convinced of your position, but I will take the time to reflect, pray, and act on it.